Customer Reviews

What to Say When you Talk To Yourself

5 star:		(101)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I work as a therapist in the mental health field and regularly read Self-Help books for myself and to incorporate into treatment programs. Many of these books have interesting theories which don't work or are too tedious to use with individuals seeking quick solutions to problems. This book teaches us that we literally become what we think and tell ourselves. Other books have touched on this concept in the past, but this book teaches us quick and easy methods to stop unwanted thinking/behaviour patterns - to "erase and replace" our negative thoughts with ones which will build our success. Prior to reading this book approximately 10 years ago - this technique required many hours of written assignments and counselling. Individuals now have a simple and effective tool to make permanent positive change in their lives by learning the right things to say to themselves. It reduces the need for prolonged psychotherapy through professionals because it allows to become our own therapist. This book goes beyond positive thinking, it is more than wishful thinking with no concrete instructions on how to achieve happiness. This is a quick and easy method to create any level of change an individual desires -by using specific self-talk words and scripts throughout their day. I give this book to every patient that I believe is serious about making positive change in their life!

Of all the self-help books I've read, this one is the best! I agree with the other reviewers who said that this one book says it all. It tells you why so many good self-help ideas work for a while and then stop. This book doesn't stop after you've finished reading it. The part about how we got programmed from an early age, and then keep living out those programs was especially helpful to me. But then Dr. Helmstetter goes on to tell you exactly what to do to change the negative programs and replace them.

I also found it very readable and easy to understand. I read that it's published in 65 countries around the world and I can understand why. It makes so much sense. This is one of those seminal books that everyone should read first. It is also very easy to read. Dr. Helmstetter avoids all the psychological jargon and writes directly to the reader in words that anyone can understand. (I gave a copy to my 13 year-old daughter, and even she got it.) Of all the books in my self-talk library, this one is in first place. It's written for adults, but I wish someone had given this book to me when I was 13. It would have changed my life then, just as it has changed my life now. On a scale of 1 - 5, this book gets 10 stars.

Have you ever read an inspiring 'self-help' book or heard a tremendous motivational speaker that made you want to make significant positive changes in your life? When you tried to implement those changes, did you notice that they were temporary at best, and that you eventually fell back into the same self-defeating patterns that held you prisoner in the first place?

Helmstetter rightly points out that the majority of information that our subconscious mind receives, from both external and internal sources, is negative. At any given time within our subconscious, as many as three negative thoughts are duking it out with one positive. Not knowing right from wrong, our subconscious chooses to believe the most dominant thought pattern. Unless we feed more positive messages to our subconscious, we become a prisoner to negative thought patterns.

What to Say reveals a simple way to overcome the onslaught of negative thought by literally feeding positive thoughts into our subconscious through Self-Talk. More than just affirmation statements, Helmstetter shows how to get specific and attack problems at their source.

This book will serve you well on its own, and will be even more effective as a catalyst to help you apply success principles from other books and speakers. This simple concept of Self-Talk will allow you to take success principles that are common knowledge, and convert them to common practice.

Larry Hehn, author of Get the Prize: Nine Keys for a Life of Victory

I tend to lean mostly to those books one would consider as "spiritual" but this is a book I have no qualms in recommending to those who may not be that enthusiastic about the "spiritual side" of life even though I know in my heart that all things - regardless of what they may look like - are spiritual at the deepest level of things.

This was a book I got when I was desperately looking for things to get me out of the hole I had dug for myself. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was responsible for my life. I could no longer blame my parents, or my teachers, or former priests or preachers...I was responsible for me. How scary! How intimidating! How freeing! How liberating! The first thing I had to come face to face with was how I was relating to myself because how we relate to ourselves is usually the same way we relate to the world and I became painfully aware that I was relating to myself in a not so friendly of a manner.

I thought I was a loser, a disappointment, a failure. I thought I was a mistake, an accident, God's screw-up. It's terrible the things we call ourselves. But then I looked at my world and it seemed as though I had every right to call myself these things because my world reflected these thoughts. I had no idea that there was a direct correlation between my inner thoughts and my outer world. We can keep nothing a "secret" to the universe because the universe will always gladly reproduce our deepest beliefs. "Oh, you think you are a loser?" BAM "Here's something to make you think the way..." "Oh, you feel like a dissapointment?" WHAM "How's this for disappointing?" Of course, the reverse of this is also true and that's not because the universe is neither positive or negative but is always completely neutral and whatever it is that we believe about ourselves, about others, about life in general is exactly what we will receive. The basic law of life is just as Jesus the Christ said, "It is done unto you AS you believe..."

99.9% of our overall beliefs are formed by what we are saying to ourselves about ourselves. Even if we are calling someone else "an idiot" it's not really a reflection of the other person as much as it is a reflection of what we believe about ourselves.

I read this book thoughtfully and willing to change some of my "inner scripts" and I thought at first that I was lying to myself by saying these positive things about myself and my life but I continued these things to myself and I actually began to slowly believe a few of those things and what was really strange was that my life was beginning to change in the same direction as my thoughts. The more tolerance I showed myself, the more tolerance I showed to my world. The more I told myself that I was smart enough or capable enough or strong enough, the more my world would give me these experiences to prove that these things were indeed, true.

We never have any reason to call ourselves ugly or fat or stupid or dumb. We must remember that we were created out of Love, of Light, of Life itself. You are not an accident or a mistake, you are here to give of the good that is within you now and the only way you can ever know that this good exists is to recognize it within yourself first and foremost because if you're waiting for someone on the outside to tell you first, you're gonna wait a long, long time.

Believe in your best self. Bring it forth. Be happy with your life because I promise you this, after you're gone, there will never be another person just like you. You are beautiful now and forever.

Peace and Blessings.

The essence of this book can be captured in the following excerpts:

P 70
"We believe what we are programmed to believe. Our conditioning, from the day we are born, has created, reinforced, and nearly permanently cemented most of what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about most of what goes on around us. Whether the programming was right or wrong, true or false, the result of it is what we believe. It all starts with programming! What we have accepted from the outside world or fed to ourselves, has initiated a nature cause and effect chain reaction sequence which cannot fail to lead us to successful self-management, or to the unsuccessful mismanagement of ourselves, our resources and our futures. It is our programming that sets up our beliefs, and the chain reaction begins. In logical progression, what we believe determines our attitudes, affects our feelings, directs our behavior, and determines our success or failure:

1) Programming creates beliefs
2) Beliefs create attitudes
3) Attitudes create feelings
4) Feelings determine actions
5) Actions create results

P 72>
Self talk is a way to override our past negative programming by erasing or replacing it with conscious, positive new directions.

P 212

Just the simple act of telling yourself that you are going to have a "good day", as an example, not only helps convince you mentally, its sets off chemical/electrical triggers in your brain which affect your mental state which in turn affects you physiologically, which in turn affects how you think. It is a self generating cycle: thought, emotional response, physiological response, thought, emotional response and so on until something breaks or changes the cycle. That is why one negative incident first thing in the morning, can cause a chain reaction throughout the day. It affects our energy and our enthusiasm, our initiative and our spirit.

Overall, I thought the author's message was thoughtful, clear and important (but not concise). I do think that the essence of the recommendations could have been presented in half the pages as there was considerable repetition.

The day before yesterday I used this book to create a self-talk tape about finishing my Masters thesis. By the next afternoon (yesterday), a MAJOR obstacle to finishing my thesis, suddenly disappeared! The obstacle was not even something I was doing, it wasn't something under my control. It was my advisor. For months I have been telling him I don't think the program he wants me to use to analyze my data, is going to work, and I've been saying we should use a certain other program. Suddenly yesterday, out of the blue, he says the first program won't work and we should use the other program. A small miracle!

Even if miracles don't immediately happen, I bet if you use Helmstetter's book, you will experience the other thing that happened since I created my self-talk tape two days ago: I had been feeling depressed and panicked about my thesis and how it was stalled. I was getting paralyzed with negative thinking, feeling steeped in stress, despair, disgust at myself, etc. contaminating every minute and every aspect of my life. Very counter-productive. As soon as I created my self-talk tape I felt all of this dark cloud lift off me, and I have felt happy, hopeful and energized, ever since.

I believe the way I have adapted Helmstetter's method turbo-charges its effectiveness. I urge everyone to buy his book. And I suggest the two adaptations I use.

How I use Helmstetter's method: 1.) Use Julia Cameron's (from her book "The Artist's Way") method of writing "blurts," to identify negative self-talk that's holding me back. Reverse all the blurts into positive statements. Ex: Blurt - "I'm such a procrastinator, I'll never get this done." Reverse - "You have received a lot of praise over the years for being incredibly focused and hardworking and completing huge, difficult projects by the deadline no matter what it takes." 2.) Believe that the Universe (a.k.a. God) is helping me. This is effective in the way prayer/meditation/visualization is. Excerpt from my self-talk tape: "The Universe wants you to finish your Thesis, so it is helping you in many ways, to finish it quickly and easily. The magic of the Universe is making your thesis exceptionally excellent. The outcome of your thesis is going to be great. The Universe is taking care of that. When you are on the right path and the Universe is helping you, you NEVER need to worry. You feel deeply happy and at peace as your thesis flows smoothly to completion."

I write "You" in my scripts because they feel more powerful than "I." I record my scripts with New Agey spa music in the background because music has a powerful effect on emotions and the subconscious (just ask Hallmark's ad agency). Also, after I finish speaking the script, I let the tape recorder and music run to the end. Then, when I listen to the tape, it finishes with the music. This is especially great at night when I fall asleep to the tape. Self-talk tapes help me relax and fall asleep!

It's very simple to record and you don't need to be a high-tech perfectionist about it. Just put on a CD, put the tape recorder on a table a couple feet in front of the music, turn on the music, press record, let the music play about 20 seconds, speak the script (repeating each sentence three times), then let the recorder and music run until one or the other finishes.

Listen to your tape every morning while getting dressed, drinking coffee etc., every day while washing dishes, every night as you fall asleep, in your car on the way to work...

Using this book will immediately help you feel wonderful and energized. It will quickly change your life. And it may even work a miracle or two for you.

Every human being can benefit greatly from this easy to read and easy to understand book. The most significant revelation is contained in the simple statement in the book that "The brain simply believes what you tell it most." It does not believe what anyone else tells it. The brain is a great pretender though...when it has to be...to survive. The book shows how the brain has an uncanny ability to recognize, accept, and act on truth...when a person speaks their truth to their brain about their self. Who knows their self better than one's own being? Each person is in charge of their own brain and behavior. Few people act as if they actually know it. In the current "claim, blame and search for fame" society, it is very good and very rare to find a book of factual and actual truth.

I have read hundreds of self-help books, but "what to say when you talk to yourself" is the best book I have read so far. Without any doubt.

In this book Dr. Helmstetter shows you how to change your way of thinking by giving your brain positive affirmations.
The basic principle behind the book is that you "are what you think". Due to that fact, you can quit smoking, loose weight, increase confidence or kill worries, by just give you the right self-talk. It`s a kind of self-hypnosis.

If you, for instance, suffer from insomia, you should say to yourself: "I sleep good every night, and I wake up full of energy". By saying a such sentence over and over, you will after while change your way of thinking and thus sleep better.
Of course, the circumstances around us will always affects us. But, by giving ourself the right self-talk, you can handle any situation in a better way. The book is all about being better.

The book is very easy to read, and the techniques that are described are highly effective and easy to apply.

This is, perhaps, the only self-help book that you need.

All in all, just buy the book, use the techniques and see the results. You will be amazed.

Dr. Shad Helmstetter's book is among the best self help books. Literally, because most all of the challenges we face have more to do with how we think about ourselves in relation to things much more so than anything else. By continued practice of the Self Talk method in a short while you can literally see and feel yourself being affected by your own Self Talk,which in turn begins to make you aware of all the negative self talk going on around you and not to let your subconscious mind choose to be affected by it, or more importantly be a party to it. Excellent read, get the Self Talk CD's as well.And all the other books by Dr. Helmstetter, The Self Talk Solution and Choices. :-)

Twenty years ago I quit smoking using the suggestions in this book. My husband raced stock cars and during the race evening I would smoke at least one pack and open another. That didn't include the pack I smoked during the day. I read the book, and took a business card, listed all the positive things about quitting, put a piece of clear packing tape on it and stuck it in my cigarette case. Each time I lit up I would read this card out loud, that is key. Your brain begins to make the changes in your body to change your habit. Within three weeks I had quit, with NO WITHDRAWAL symptoms. Twenty years later I am smoke free and my lungs have no lasting effects from three packs a day. Try it, IT WORKS.